When the French Open announces its draw this morning, Roger Federer might find himself the victim of a long-standing practice whose unfairness is magnified by the growing gap between today’s top three men and the rest of the field.

All professional tournaments, major and minor, create draws with a mixture of precision and randomness. The top seed and the second seed are placed, precisely and always, at opposing ends of the draw. The third and fourth seeds are positioned to meet either the top seed or the second seed in the semifinals, but not so precisely that four always meets one and three always meets two. The lower your seed, the greater chance you have of meeting a high-ranked player earlier than you might like. If you are not one of the lucky 32 seeds, you are placed at random and could meet the top seed in the first round (even if your world ranking is 33, one below what would allot you a seed).

This has rarely been a problem in tennis, which has seeded tournaments this way for decades. (Thank you to the executive vice president in charge of rules at the ATP, Gayle Bradshaw, for his research on the tradition of placing seeded players in different slots in draws.)

Today, though, it’s an incredible disadvantage for Federer, the top seed, to draw Novak Djokovic, the third seed, in the semifinals, rather than Nikolay Davydenko, the fourth seed. Djokovic won the Australian Open this year and beat Federer along the way. He also reached the French Open semifinals last year (he lost to Rafael Nadal). The Serb, who celebrated his 21st birthday yesterday, trails Nadal in the rankings by 600 points. Davydenko is almost 2,000 points behind Djokovic. He’s never won a major title. He’s never played in a major final. He’s never beaten Federer, not once in 12 tries. If Federer had his druthers, you can be sure he’d rather play Davydenko in the semifinals; while Nadal, the three-time defending champion, and Djokovic, the game’s most prominent and dangerous newcomer, duke it out.

There’s no reason why Federer shouldn’t have that privilege — protecting privilege, after all, is the point of seeding players. If the 32 seeds were placed in identical spots for every draw, the top seed would have the ultimate protection, the second seed the next-best protection, and so on. Federer has earned the right to play Davydenko in the semifinals — unless, of course, the French Open seeds players on its own, as Wimbledon does, in which case Nadal would be seeded first and perhaps no one else would deserve a seed. We could go back to the challenge round of the old days, where the defending champion plays one match against the challenger who comes through the rest of the draw.

Regardless of whether Federer has to defeat Djokovic or Davydenko in the semifinals, he’s not likely to win his first French Open title this year. Neither is Djokovic. The composition of the draw, in essence, will help to determine who has the honor of losing to Nadal in the final.

I’ve seen a few commentators suggest that Nadal is more vulnerable this year than he has been in previous years, as evidenced by the blisters on his feet he suffered from in Rome and his two taxing victories in Hamburg against Djokovic and Federer on back-to-back days. I’m not of that opinion. To me, those two matches did little to encourage Djokovic and Federer, who each had to play spectacular tennis to win a single set. While it’s an accomplishment to stay close to Nadal when he’s playing well, it can have the effect of showing how much energy is needed to just keep him in view. Federer and Djokovic were working hard to match what Nadal does routinely and naturally. Djokovic called it his best match ever on clay — and he wasn’t close to winning. To win, Federer and Djokovic will have to play better and for longer, and sustaining that level of intensity against a superior defensive player like Nadal, over the course of a best-of-five-set match, is a lot — and most likely too much — to ask, even for men as talented as Federer and Djokovic. Nadal knows this, too. Those two victories will increase his confidence, not diminish it.

Nadal’s much publicized records on clay are worth repeating: 108-2 on clay since April 2005; 21-0 in his career at the French Open, with only seven sets lost in three years; and 21-1 in clay-court finals, the one loss coming last year in Hamburg after a tiring stretch of matches without a day to rest. On clay, he’s second to Bjorn Borg in the history of tennis — only Borg has won the French Open four consecutive years, as Nadal will attempt to do this year. Borg won the tournament on two other occasions for a total of six. Nadal’s a long way from matching that feat, but considering that he is a week shy of his 22nd birthday, it’s not unrealistic for him to do it, or perhaps win that many in a row. Nadal knows that Djokovic is more likely to be the next no. 1 player in the world, or at least the next player to hold on to that ranking for an extended period. He knows Federer may well be remembered as the greatest player in the sport’s history (Nadal already considers Federer to be just that).

But he is the best on clay, the best at the French Open, and he’s not going to give that up easily. We may not have seen the best of Federer and Djokovic on clay — but I don’t know that we’ve seen the best of Nadal, either. The more those two push Nadal, the more likely we are to see him at his peak.

Mr. Perrotta is a senior editor at Tennis magazine. He can be reached at tperrotta@tennismagazine.com.